When Peter Laviolettewas panic-fired Monday morning for his team shooting 2.4% through three games at even strength, I laughed. Then I thought about the five-year contract they gave Vincent Lecavalier over the offseason, and I laughed some more. Then I thought about how they traded Vezina-winning goalie Sergei Bobrovsky one season and then bought out Ilya Bryzgalov the next, choosing to pay the Russian $23 million over the next 14 years not to play, tears started rolling down my face. Paul HoLOLmgren, you are teh best.

Once I got past that (it was difficult), I was quite happy for long-time Washington Capitals enforcer Craig Berube, who was named the Flyers’ new head coach (Not interim!).

Berube becomes the third player from the Capitals’ 1997-98 Stanley Cup Final team to become a head coach in the NHL joining former Capital captains Dale Hunter and Adam Oates. With former Caps’ 98 Cup Final players Calle Johansson and Olie Kolzig serving as assistants in Washington (Kolzig is goaltending coach), I wondered how many other players from that very-talented, overachieving team are now coaching in hockey.

NHL Head Coaches

Dale Hunter, Washington Capitals (2011-12)

Photo credit: Justin K. Aller

Former Washington Capitals captain Dale Hunter became the first player from the Caps’ 97-98 Stanley Cup Final team to be a bench boss in the NHL, accepting the heading coaching position for the Caps mid-season in 2011-12 after Bruce Boudreau was fired. Hunter has also had a very successful career coaching junior hockey. After he retired as a player in 2001-02, Hunter became the co-owner, president, and head coach of the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League. The Knights won the Memorial Cup in 2005 and have won two OHL Championships during Hunter’s tenure in 2005 and 2013.

Adam Oates, Washington Capitals (2012-Present)

Photo credit: Greg Fiume

Adam Oates, who succeeded Dale Hunter as captain during their playing days, also succeeded Hunter as head coach, taking over the reigns of the Capitals during the lockout shortened 2012-13 season. Oates began his coaching career as an assistant coach for the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2009–10 season where he worked with the team’s offense. In 2010, Oates joined the New Jersey Devils as an assistant coach for two seasons, losing in the Stanley Cup Finals in 2011-12. Since becoming head coach in Washington, Oates’s Caps have led the league in power-play percentage.

NHL Assistant Coaches

Calle Johansson, Washington Capitals (2012-Present)

Photo via capitals.nhl.com

Calle Johansson, the Washington Capitals franchise leader in games played, first served as an assistant coach with Frolunda of the Swedish Elite League in 2006-07. On July 18, 2012, Johansson was named an assistant coach to the Caps, joining former teammate Adam Oates behind the bench to coach the team’s defensemen.

On July 10, 2006, Bill Ranford, the Capitals’ back-up goaltender and a Conn Smyth winner (1990 with Oilers), was named the goaltending coach of the Los Angeles Kings. Ranford won a championship as part of the Kings’ 2011-12 Stanley Cup winning season. Before coaching in LA, Ranford served as goaltending coach of the WHL’s Vancouver Giants (2004-05), and the BCHL’s Coquitlam Express and Burnaby Express.

Phil Housley, Nashville Predators (2013-Present)

Photo credit: Frederick Breedon

Phil Housley is one of the greatest offensive defensemen to play in the NHL. He scored 1,234 points over his 21-year career, notching his 1,000th point in a Washington Capitals uniform. Since he retired in 2003, Housley has gone on to have a fantastic coaching career. Last year, he won the World Junior Championship as head coach of Team USA. This summer, he was named an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators, serving under garden gnome Barry Trotz.

Former Caps checking-line forward Kelly Miller is from a famous hockey family. He is brother of former NHL’ers Kevin and Kip and the cousin of current Buffalo Sabres goaltender Ryan Miller and Ryan’s brother Drew Miller of the Detroit Red Wings. After Miller retired in 1999-00, he joined Anaheim as an assistant coach (2000-01), and later the New York Islanders (2001-03). Miller’s now an assistant coach at Michigan State University (2011-present).

Minor League Coaches

Defenseman Nolan Baumgartner only played four regular season games for the Capitals in 1997-98, but we’re including him anyway. After retiring in 2011-12 as captain of the AHL’s Chicago Wolves (boy, did he have a long career), Baumgartner joined Chicago’s coaching staff in 2012-13 as an assistant coach. The Vancouver Canucks changed affiliates in 2013-14, and Baumgartner continues in his role, now with the Utica Comets.

Junior Hockey Coaches

Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovsky was awesome and dammit – why didn’t anything come of him after that four-goal game against Buffalo? Svejkovsky played in one game during the Capitals’ 1997-98 playoff run. Unfortunately, post-concussion syndrome cut Svejkovsky’s career short and he retired after the 2000-01 season. In 2007, Yogi was hired as an assistant coach for the Vancouver Giants (the franchise where Milan Lucic played junior hockey). He is also Director of Hockey Operations for the Seafair Minor Hockey Association, where he also coaches Atom rep. Read this utterly fantastic feature about him by the Richmond Review. A sample:

“I feel perfect now,” says Svejkovsky, 35, who was selected 17th overall in the 1996 NHL Entry Draft by the Capitals and appeared to be on his way to a productive pro career after scoring 23 goals and 19 assists over five NHL seasons. “It’s been 11 years (since he was forced to retire) so there’s been lots of time to recover. If I would be younger I’d probably try to go back and play. But I’ve found a new life in terms of coaching and stuff like that and I feel this is probably what I was meant to do and I don’t look back.”

Feisty forward Todd Krygieronce beat the crap out of Mario Lemieux. That’s really all you need to know about his playing career, so let’s now focus on what he’s done since then. In 2013-14, the 46-year-old (man I’m old) was hired as the head coach of the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks.

Defenseman Stewart Malgunas played 8 games for the Caps during the 1997-98 regular season. He was not a particularly good player, so let’s be brief. He ended up returning to coach where his career first started, joining the WHL’s Prince George Cougars and later BCHL’s Prince George Spruce Kings as an assistant coach in 2003. He spent a few years there before leaving hockey completely.

Coaching Abroad

Esa Tikkanen, Head Coach of the Mestis’s League’s Jokipojat (2010-11)

Photo credit: Joona-Pekka Hirvonen

Esa Tikkanen, the pariah who killed all momentum in the SCF when he missed an empty-net on a breakaway, became a coach on a different continent. Two different continents. During the 2004–05 season, Tikkanen was a player-coach for the Anyang Halla, a South Korean team in the Asia League Ice Hockey. After one season in Korea, Tikkanen became the coach for Frisk Tigers of the Norwegian GET-ligaen. Tikkanen was head coach only for the 2005–06 season. Finally, in 2010, Tikkanen was a mid-season head coaching hire for Jokipojat, a team in a Finnish second-tier league under Liiga (formerly SM-Liiga).

Minor Junior Hockey

Mark Tinordi, Head Coach of the Washington Junior Nationals (2006-?)

Finally, let’s finish with big, bruising defenseman Mark Tinordi. Tenner scored a goal and tallied an assist in 21 games during the Caps 1997-98 Finals run. He also had 42 PIMs. After his career ended, Tinordi became the coach of the Washington Junior Nationals in 2006–07. He is also the Director of the Washington Junior Nationals College Development Program. His son Jarred Tinordi made the NHL and currently plays for the Montreal Canadiens.

Notes: We left a few guys out. Caps fifty goal scorer Peter Bondra was the General Manager of Team Slovakia from 2007-11. Jeff Toms (one postseason game in 1997-98) now coaches the Soo St. Marie Greyhounds of the Atom Minor AA league– a league of 9 year olds. Defenseman Ken Klee isn’t a coach but does hold camps for kids in Colorado. Dwayne Hay (according to his LinkedIn profile) is a sports conditioning coach at Strive Nutrition and Fitness, as well as a stick rep at Base Hockey, and a marketing consultant at Remax Central in Calgary, Alberta. What an over-achiever. Forward Andrew Brunette (who we should have never traded away) was a special assistant to the GM of the Minnesota Wild last year.

And finally, this:

Joe Juneau is coaching a Nunavut girls team playing my daughters team tonight at Potvin arena.

What was your first reaction when you found out about the return of Kovalchuk?

I was in shock. To me it is bizarre. I don’t see a sporting component in what he did. Why break a contract and go to the KHL when you are a leading player on a NHL team, when you haven’t won the Stanley Cup yet? Why abandon a team that is being built around you? I don’t see any motivation aside from money. Yes, New Jersey has financial problems, but they are not bankrupt, and no one except Kovalchuk is leaving the team.

In an interview in 1998 you said when you were making your first steps with Dinamo, Mikhail Tatarinov was helping you a lot.

When I came to Dinamo, Misha was already a star, but he took me under his wing, helped me with advice a lot. Later he left for Washington, and then returned before the ’94 Olympics. Once we sat down for a talk at our training base: [he said] “Starting tomorrow, we are going to work hard, prepare for the Olympics – you are going to fight your way to the NHL, and I will return there as well”. And then he disappeared again – problems with alcohol… A complicated person. He was playing cards, killed a man, did his time in prison. When he got out, he was calling me every week, asking for hockey uniform, sticks, but now I haven’t heard from him in a year. A very talented man – from God. Smallish, pudgy, but the shot he had – I haven’t seen a harder shot.

CSN’s Alan May, who played with Tatarinov in Washington, shared a few stories about him on Twitter.

You had to take on a second job to make ends meet in the early nineties, right?

It was around 1994, we weren’t paid at all – so I had to start freelancing as an [unofficial cab] driver. I knew Moscow very well by then. Made enough money to pay for gas. I was driving around with my wife – too boring to do it by myself. I lived in Biryulevo – not the nicest area, but I never was kicked out of the car or had a knife to my throat.

Do you still remember in details that story about bandits extorting money from you?

There was this criminal group Orekhovo, they demanded money when I signed my NHL contract. The FSB and RUBOP (Organized Crime Division) sent some people to set up a trap [at my place]. They guys asked me “Do you have anything to watch? Any combat action stuff?” All I had was some tapes with hockey fights, so I turned that on for them.

They stayed for two days. Finally the thugs called and set up a meeting. The security guys tied one up right away, but the second thug got away at first. It was funny – they were supposed to intercept him with a car, but it wouldn’t start. They later got the second one as well. never had anything like that in America, but whenever I came back to Moscow for a few years afterwards, I was always looking over my shoulder.

Your first difficulties in America?

I didn’t know the language. My pregnant wife was sitting in a hotel room; we didn’t even know how to order dinner. I bumped into a Russian scout, so I grabbed him: “Let’s go order some food – my wife is hungry.” … To learn English, Alex Godynyuk wouldn’t speak Russian to me: “Learn English!” There is a tradition in America to exchange presents for Halloween – so the guys from Hartford gave me a dictionary with the inscription “What the fuck”. That was one of the first expressions I learned, I was driving everybody nuts with it. Overall, it didn’t take long for me to learn the language. I was young and ambitious, wanted to play.

In Washington you played with Peter Bondra, who was born in Ukraine, just like your ancestors.

Yeah, Pet’ka [Russian short form for Peter] is from Luck. He speaks Russian well, even had a Soviet passport. He told me they were trying to talk him into playing for the Soviet National Team, even send someone to convince him. But his mentality is European, even American already. You have to know him – very enterprising. His son David is also a good hockey player, playing in the US right now.

Which of the non Russian-speaking players were you close during your first years?

A fighter Mark Janssens lived not far from me – he was a center, helping me with faceoffs. Shanahan and I often stayed after practice stickhandling at center ice. Brendan was complaining: “I am getting dizzy – let’s just shoot the puck. Five in the left corner, five in the right one” And he was always hitting the target.

Brad McCrimmon was always helping with advice – he died in the Lokomotiv crash. He was always looking after the two youngsters – myself and Chris Pronger. Chris was even younger than me. He didn’t have an ID yet, so I let him borrow mine. Also, Paul Coffey once shocked me: he gave me a bad pass once in practice, skated up to me and apologized: “it is disrespectful to give an inaccurate pass.” Later I tried to teach that to my kids – to respect your teammates.

You played with Theo Fleury in Chicago. What do you remember about him?

Not an ordinary guy. He was on drugs. Had a serious addiction. One time we were in Columbus, Theo went to a bar, got drunk, had a fight with the bouncer. There was a serious scandal, but they somehow managed to quiet it down.

In a way, Jaromir is like a child, very emotional and vulnerable. Toward the end of the season he had a falling out with Adam Oates – each was pulling the blanket onto himself. Nevertheless, Jagr is amazing. It’s always a pleasure to look at him, even at the gym when he does squats with a barbell. I am very happy that he played in Russia for awhile, and then returned to the NHL. I was rooting for him during the last playoffs – it was obvious how much he wanted to win, how many chances he created.

Is it true that outside the arena the tough guys are nothing but kindness?

Exactly. Berube, Simon, Chase. Nice, kind guys, with a good sense of humor. Very gentle and always ready to help. And generally speaking, there aren’t that many American guys who are assholes – there are some among French Canadians though. What I like about the NHL – the team is like a family there. Team parties, kids events, families visiting each other. It’s not like that in Russia. At best, we have players wives in fancy clothes and lots of makeup going to the game. In America, you have this constant festive spirit, you live as a team.

Do you remember your rookie dinner NHL ritual?

Nothing happened the first year because of the lockout. During my second year though, I had to sing a song. About my home town Vorkuta. We’ve already had quite a bit to drink at the time, so I really let it rip. Our GM was in the next room: “I thought we got a hockey player, and an opera singer showed up.”

In Colorado it was also a lot of fun. For the dinner party, the rookies were told to bring some lingerie – and it’s their problem where to get that from. So Cody McCormick had this solution: he brought two good looking ladies and said: “They have very expensive lingerie, so they refused to take it off, but agreed to spend the evening with us.” The girls ended up hanging out with the team.

So how do they decide in the NHL whose turn it is to be the butt of the jokes?

Every team has a clown (in a good sense) who always puts ketchup on someone, puts shaving cream in shoes, toothpaste on towels. In Washington Brendan Witt was always responsible for that. Usually the jokes are directed at someone who did something to deserve it.

Did you ever play a joke on anybody?

Dima Khristich – but it was an April Fool’s joke. He was coming back from New Hampshire, driving from the airport. I call him: “My car is broken down, give me a ride.” – “But I already went by you.” – “Send someone to get me then.” Meanwhile, I am already at the arena. Dima rushes to the practice, gives administrator some money, tells him where to go. Then enters the locker room – and I go “April Fool’s!”

Khristich is a real polyglot, isn’t he?

Yes, he is a very smart guy, finished school two years earlier. Always was doing some puzzles. A very good and decent guy, we are still very good friends.

The 40-year-old Nikolishin spent time last year as a representative of the KHL’s Players Association and a WJC analyst. Over the weekend, Niko — who spent several seasons playing with Evgeny Kuznetsov’s Traktor Chelyabinsk — was given a try-out with Gagarin Cup champion Dynamo Moscow for 2013-14. If he makes the team, it would be the first time in two seasons he’s played in the KHL.